en Oe ee ee ee ee eee ee oe oe Reprinted from: APPROACHES TO EMOTION. K. Scherer & P. Ekman (Eds.), Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1984. Expression and the Nature of Emotion Paul Ekman University of California, San Francisco INTRODUCTION ‘There is isle agreement about a definition of emotion. Not all of those who study emotion even think it necessary to make their own definition explicit. None hhave explained how they distinguish the boundaries of emotion, how emotion differs from reflex, motive, mood, or attitude. The last half of this chapter proposes ten characteristics which can help in beginning to define what dis- finguishes emotion from other psychological states. These characteristics are based in part on my earlier work, (with Wallace V. Friesen) on universals in facial expression. { will summarize that work before describing our current research—on voluntary and involuntary expression, emotion-specific autonomic nervous system activity, and startle reactions—which is the other source for my ideas about the characteristics that distinguish emotion, CROSS CULTURAL STUDIES OF EXPRESSION For more than 100 years scientists argued about whether facial expressions are ttniversal or specific to each culture. On one side Darwin (1872/1965), and, ‘more recently. Lorenz (1965) and Eibl-Eibesfeldt (1972), argued that facial ‘expressions are innate, evolved behavior. On the other side, Birdwhistll (1970). Klineberg (1940), LaBarre (1947), Leach (1972), and Mead (1975), argued that facial expressions are instead like a language, socially learned, culturally con- twolled, and variable in meaning from one setting to another. ‘When Friesen and I began our study of facial expression we fortunately were able to borrow from Carleton Gajdusek (1963), over 100,000 feet of film he had320 EKMAN taken of two preliterate New Guinea cultures in the late 50s and eal 60s, befor these peoples had contact with the outside world. These New Guineans did na show any expressions we had not seen before: there were no unique facia expressions. Although the people looked very exotic in their dress and other aspects of their behavior, their facial expressions were totaly familiar and. a best we could tell when we could see enough of the social context to check out judgments, our interpretations of their expressions were correct. Theit facial ‘expressions were nota foreign language. Alter studying these films we set out to xplore systematically the possibility of universality in facial expression, Our best known experiments involved showing photographs of fac Bressions to observers indifferent cultures and asking them to check from a lst the emotion they saw. Observers i five cultures gave the same interpretation of ‘ach face. (This and our other cross cultucal studies are reported in detail and compared to previous cross cultural studies of expression by athe investigators Ekman, 1973.) Quite independently of us, Caroll lzard (1971) did exactly the same experiment, with different photographs of facial expressions and a some. ‘what different list of emotion terms, and obtained very similar results ‘Although pleased that we were able to obtain suong evidence of universality in expression which fit our impressions from viewing the New Guinea fllims we were perplexed about how wise people, anthropologists such as Weston La Bare and Margaret Mead who had studied many cultures, had come to the opposite Judgment about facial expression, We came up with the notion of display ruler (Ekman & Friesen, 19694) to reconcile out findings with their observation of cultural differences. Display rules are overlearned habits about who can show what emotion to whom and when they can show it. Examples of display rules in many Wester cultures are: males should not cry; females (except in # maternal f0le) should not show anger; losers should not cry in public and winners should fot look too happy about winning. We’ presume that these display rules are teamed early in childhood as well a later. that they vary with social class and ethnic background within cultures. as well as across cultures, We designed an experiment to show that display rules are responsible forthe ftequent observation of cultural differences in facial expression. Within Single experiment we hoped to show universality both in facial expression and cultural differences due to display rules. We contrasted Japan with the United States because of the observations of how Orientals are “inscrutable and because of the anthropological data, which translated into our terms. suggested that Ja. Panese have very different display rules, particularly about not displaying nega. tive affect in the presence of an authority. ‘A subject sat alone in a room, watching positive (scenery) and negative (surgical films while a hidden video camera recorded facial expressions, We had one set of subjects in Berkeley. California, and another set of subjects in Tokyo When we measured each and every movement of the face we found nearly ‘entcal facial muscle movement at neatly identical points inthe film, regardless eae Pe Ss Se ee ese eS Pee eeeee ei oe be ee ee he eho be a “Se 18. EXPRESSION AND THE NATURE OF EMOTION 321 of culture. The correlations between the expressions shown by Americans and Japanese were above .90. Culture made no difference. Inthe second part of the experiment, we brought a scientist into the room with the subject, an American in Berkeley, a Jpanese scientist in Tokyo. Our hypothesis was that display rules ‘would operate in Japan, causing the subject to mask negative affect wit a smile In the United States the presence of an authority might lead college students, (ducing the rebellious 19608), to amplify negative affect, cenainly not to conceal it. Measurement of the facial movements showed no overlap in the facial behav. for of the Japanese and Americans. In this single experiment we had shown how facial expressions are both universal and culturally different. tn private, when no display rules to mask expression were operative, we saw the biologically based, evolved, univerea facial expressions of emotion. Ina social situation, we had shown how differcet tules about the management of expression led to culturally different facial expressions. ‘There was all loophole, one which Ray Birdwhstll was quick to exploit in our evidence of universats in facial expression. All the people we had stedied had shared visual input. Instead of evolution being responsible for pan-human {acial expressions it might be the television tube and the silver screen, Bind, whistell argued that people had leamed from watching John Wayne and Charlie Chaplin, which expressions signify which emotion, We went to New Guinea to close this loophole. We studied a visually isolated Brople. who had not seen the television screen, movies, photographs, mag ines. and few. if any, ousiders. We did two types of studies. We could not de, typical emotion judgment study because the people could not check emotion labels off from a list, Instead we told the subject a story, such as.""A man her teamed that his child has just died," and asked the subject 1 choose from three expressions the photograph that showed that man, These visually isolated sub. ‘cts picked forthe child-died story the photograph that had been judged as sad in literate culture: the angry one for the “‘about to fight” story. and so on. Incin dently, we got the idea forthe task from a report by Dashiell (1927) about how to measure the judgment of emotional expression in children who coutd not yet ‘ead. Our second study turned the design around. We read a story tothe subject and asked him to show itt us on his face, When we measured the New Guinean Posed expressions we found they moved the same muscles for each emotion an o people in literate cultures. VOLUNTARY AND INVOLUNTARY EXPRESSION When people follow display rules to manage an expression do they totally suc ceed. oF is some leakage detectable? How completely can expressions be mask. ? Can people who deliberately put on feelings they don't actually experience322 eKMAN ‘do so in a way that is convincing to others? Can one tell from the expression itself that it is false, or is that only learned from the context in which it occurs, if at al. More generally these are questions about how well voluntary efforts can inhibit involuntary expression and the extent to which voluntary action can duplicate action brought about involuntarily, ‘Work in clinical neurology (Meibike, 1973; Myers, 1976:Tschiassny, 1953) ‘has shown that different neural pathways are involved in voluntary and involun: tary facial expression. Certain types of brain lesions result in a patient being tunable to smile on request. but able to smile if happiness is spontaneously aroused. Lesions in another part of the brain produce the reverse pattem. The patient can smile on request but not spontaneausly. The fact that different neural pathways are involved in voluntary and involuntary expression does not prove or. ven make it more likely that voluntary and involuntary expressions would differ in appearance, but it atleast makes the question a reasonable one to ask. Part of the problem encountered in asking such a question resides in the over simplification of the voluntary—involuntary dichotomy. There are many differ- cent voluntary expressions, and many types of involuntary expressions, each probably varying in the underlying neural substrates that are involved, We have Conducted three studies, each examining a different type of voluntary expression. First let us consider the most deliberate of voluntary expressions, facial move- ‘ments performed on request. ‘We contrasted these movements our subjects performed when we asked them to move specific mitscles with unplanned, spontaneous emotional expression. We (Ekman, Hager, & Friesen, 1981) have extensive data comparing requested smiles with smiles in response to a joke. We found a significant difference between the two in the extent of asymmetry. Deliberate smiles more often than spontaneous ones were asymmetric; and, amiong those which were asymmetrical, the deliberate more often than the spontaneous were stronger on the left side of the face (with subjects who are right handed). Because most current thinking about hemispheric specialization claims that the right hemisphere, which con- ttols the left side of the face. is implicated in emotion, one might wonder why the deliberate was stronger on the left not the right side ofthe face. Our a posteriori position is thatthe right hemisphere does not direct emotional expression. but instead manages and modulates it. In any kind of cortically modulated facial behavior. whether it is a requested action or a speech-accompanying piece of facial behavior, there will be more asymmetry than in either reflexive or more spontaneous emotional behavior, Let me turn to a study of another kind of voluntary movement. this time Jalse expression. false expression is put on the face deliberately to mislead the person viewing it into thinking an is felt when it is not. One of our Sudies of false expression (Ekman, Friesen, & Simons, submitted) compated spontaneous startle reactions, reactions to a blank pistol shot, with the subjects’ ‘expressions when we told them that we were going to count from ten to zero and wpe Pes es ee Pe es Sse ee eeoe ee ee ee ee a 18. EXPRESSION AND THE NATURE OF EMOTION 323, ‘hen we reached zero there would be no gunshot but they were to actin such a way that anyone looking at them would think the gun had been fired. Fine rained measurement with our Facial Action Coding System (FACS) (Ekman & Frieson, 1976, 1978) revealed many markers ofthe false startle. The latency is {00 long. It seems that no one can put a state on their face within a 100 meee which isthe hallmark ofa genuine stale. The deliberate states also are asyrn: metical tending to be stronger onthe left side ofthe face ‘A third study examined sill another type of voluntary expression, what we call a referential expression. By this we mean an expression which ecfers to an motion that is not felt a the moment. The person who sees a relerenil ex. reasion knows thatthe person showing itis mentioning an emotion which is not fe. The person who secs a false expression, however, often is misled. The {eferential expression that we have most closely examined is what we (Ekman de Friesen, 1982) calla miserable smile. This smile is put on to acknowledge being mmiserable. Anyone who sees it does not think the person making itis happy Suppose the dentist tli a patent that root canal is needed, which is going to hurt alot and cost a lot of money. A good patient will gret such news with 2 miserable smile {ts a “grin and bear it smile. It lets the other person know one it not going to show the distress o fear that one feels, It acknowledges one's misery. ‘There are many ways in which such deliberate, miserable smiles are marked. They are often either too short or to long. held om the face much longer than ‘enuine smiles. Also, they tend not to have the involvement of the muscle around the eyes. Darwin was the first to propose that in genuine smiling nt only do the lip corners go up but the orbicularis oculi muscle, which circles the eye ie ‘men of facial action. Palo Alo. Cail: Comsling Psychologists Pes. (978 ‘Ekman, ..& Friesen, W. V. Felt, fale, and iterable smiles. Journal of Nomerbal Behar 1982, 644), 238-252, ‘Ekman, P., & Musumote, D. 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